Our Daily Ocean: Day 189

The beach is a gateway to the ocean... and while large items such as plastic bottles, buckets, cups and such are easy to spot... the tiny plastic fragments, the clear wrappers, the shredded straws, and things like hair clips go completely unnoticed.  That is until we really open our eyes and start looking... and keep looking... 

What seems like such a long time ago now, my friend Bonnie of The Plastic Ocean Project said:

"...the problem with plastics in our marine environment goes unnoticed because most of it is underwater or broken down into small bits floating on the surface. Not that it takes a trained eye to see it; you just have to recognize that it’s there. Once you do, it likens to the "Magic Eyes" from the 90s. Remember staring at a random series of blotches until an image imbedded in the blotches could be recognized? Once your eyes discovered it, you could always see it. And you wondered why you hadn't noticed at first glance."

Her words have stuck with me throughout all of my beach cleanups.  A reminder of the importance to let my eyes focus on the variations in the sand... to pay attention to the details.

20 minutes on June 11, 2013 at Access 28

Litter by weight: 2 lbs
Cigarette butts: 20

Total amount of cigarette butts removed from Wrightsville Beach, NC in 189 days:

55,119